


Fool Me Once

by oxymoronic



Category: Henry IV - Shakespeare, Henry IV Part 1 - Shakespeare, Henry IV Part 2 - Shakespeare, Shakespeare - History Plays, The Hollow Crown (2012)
Genre: Companion Piece, Established Relationship, Immortality, M/M, One Shot, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-26
Updated: 2013-03-26
Packaged: 2017-12-06 14:13:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/736581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oxymoronic/pseuds/oxymoronic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story of Hal and Poins, through the ages.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fool Me Once

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a companion piece to shinobi93's _[Had We But World Enough And Time](http://archiveofourown.org/works/736651)_ : we were discussing the idea of multiple cycles of Hal's story, and each ran with it in a different direction. Thanks go to her for cheerleading and poking me to write and post this. Mainly based off _The Hollow Crown_ 's adaptation, but written with some knowledge of the play and historical events.
> 
> Rating for some mentions of violence. As far as I'm aware no warnings apply, but, as ever, if you find something that qualifies please let me know and I'll tag accordingly.

_31 st December 1999_

Hal lounges against the towering window of steel and glass, his eyes on the sharp spire of Big Ben rending the sky beside him. On the streets below, the seething mass of people settles and stills, their heads tilted up, braced for aliens or plagues or satellites tumbling from the sky; he understands their panic, but finds it amusing nonetheless. A shadow drops across his doorway, and he hides a smile behind his hand. “I didn't think I’d see you tonight.”

The window’s reflection kindly shows him Poins’ grin. “The prospect of a likely MDMA overdose didn’t appeal,” he admits as he comes to stand beside him, leans against the glass. “And,” he adds, slowly, “I thought we should, in case – I don’t know.”

Hal glances across at him, amused; there’s a high heat on Poins’ cheeks, and he refuses to meet Hal’s eye. “Don’t tell me you’re as scared as them about all this.”

“Not quite,” Poins carefully replies, inclining his head. A confession in and of itself; Hal smiles. Through the inches-thick glass at their sides Big Ben’s chime ripples and shudders the air; the world, for a minute, holds its breath –

– nothing. The clocks tick on, the satellites and extra-terrestrials stay put, and Poins presses him against the glass and kisses him. His hands, now resting on Hal’s chest, are shaking still.

 

 

_9 th May 1527_

The streets of Rome are no stranger to rivers of blood; in the course of its long and drearily repetitive history, this is hardly a splash. It is not enough to send Hal’s boots slip-sliding in the gutter, but plenty to turn thick and rank the air, unpleasantly hot and heavy on his tongue. Now, there is silence where before there had been screaming, but still the muffled sound of licking flames plays on.

The church is withered and wrecked, but still standing shamelessly, its neatly-wrought ceiling high above even Hal’s head as he steps inside. He bids his men wait by the heavy double-doors, marches up the aisle in quick strides to greet the prisoners beyond; all six of them kneel upon the floor, heads bowed, hands cuffed, and all but one have their shoulders slumped. The centremost still shakes with rage.

Hal eyes him warily as he approaches, glances to the guard at their side when he reaches the end of the aisle. “All of them are present?”

The guard nods. Moving into the city, their orders had been capture, not kill; but Charles was many miles away, and there was more than a little resentment in the air. He’s surprised neither of them died in the assault. He looks down at the back of his friend’s head, and realises that Poins may indeed have done so after all.

He places the tip of his sword between his friend’s knees. “Stand,” he says, quietly, and turns to avoid his eye, paces across to the altar’s edge; his friend follows, head bowed, shoulders a hard, firm line. Hal turns to him once the others are safely behind, takes him in with starved eyes. “I thought you long since gone from here,” Hal says.

Poins will not look at him; behind his back, the sharp metal of his cuffs digs angrily into roughened, raw skin. “I stayed to help. You were quicker than we anticipated.” He glances over at Hal; his eyes are wary and tired. “What will become of the men?”

Hal refuses to match his gaze. “We are to imprison you all, but there are fourscore of Charles’ men in the street alone. They will not last the night.” He looks up, and this time it is Poins who looks away; almost childish, he thinks, bitterly, but with the innocence of childhood gone. They had been children once, but that was long ago. The guard is studiously looking the other way; Hal hesitates, fingers the keys hanging in his hand. “We march back north tomorrow,” he murmurs, dropping his voice. “You could – ”

“I am in this place, on this side, and with these men, because of what you did to me,” Poins interrupts, quietly, his voice trembling. “ _Again_. Thank you for your gracious offer, my noble lord, but I think I will die beside my men.”

Revulsion and rage grips his friend’s frame, and Hal knows it’s no less than he deserves. “So be it,” he replies, and steps away; he cannot miss the way Poins’ breath eases as he does so. “Perhaps we will meet again one day.”

Poins’ eyes meet his, and the fury Hal sees there takes his breath away. “I hope with all the power of the Heavens that we do not.”

 

 

_27 th September 1901_

He’d been to Oxford once before; it is safe to say the city has been transformed somewhat since 1399, especially in this new and exciting age. There are more cars on the streets than horses, and Hal can’t help but note they haven’t much improved the smell.

He had not thought to find Poins yet; they were, going by what had gone before, not due to meet again for another twenty years or more. He had, however, found himself drawn there by some aching, rending pull, and sure enough he spots him sprawled out wide and open and smiling on the lawn in the teetering dregs of summer, dressed head to toe in white now smeared with grass.

He loiters to one side, watching him; whenever they find one another, Poins is never short of company. He thinks, for a moment, of staying where he stands, of walking back the way he came; of allowing Poins his happiness, his freedom, and his life. He knows that he will not. He feels suddenly, inescapably weary, and swallows back an age-old sigh.

Poins’ group stands and disperses, makes cursory plans for supper and whines a little of the work they must do beforehand; then Poins turns back towards the gate and spots him, stuttering to a halt in the middle of his sentence and breaking into a wide, beatific smile. At the sight of it Hal forgets everything and everyone to come before, narrows his world down to the press of the sun on the back of his neck and the hope in Poins’ eyes.

 

 

_12 th July 1645_

Poins sleeps lightly at the best of times, and the soft scurrying wakes him in spite of the hour and his distance to its perpetrator; he pads softly through the creaking halls, candlestick in hand, one eye on the sharp spike of light spilling out from under the kitchen door. Inside is Masterson, his lord’s man, looking guilty with a plate of hastily assorted foods in one hand – and, with a bitter crest of familiarity, he spies Hal, slumped in the cook’s chair and with his shaggy dark hair tangled and loose across his brow.

“Go,” Poins says, quietly, to Masterson, who does not appreciate him handing out orders but would much rather be back in bed than rebuke him for it now. Poins takes the plate of food and places it beside Hal as carefully as he can, his spine and shoulders rigid with anger. “You cannot stay here. If they find you they will kill you, and us next for having your kind here at all.”

Hal nods. “I know. I only ask for the night. Fairfax’s men caught up with us at Northampton – ” He breaks off, shivers. In spite of everything, Poins finds something in his stomach softens, and he lets out a small sigh, gestures to the plate.

“Eat. I’ll find some butter.”

He sits at Hal’s side and watches him eat as slowly as he can manage; all courtly ritual abandoned. It’s been a long three days – a long fifteen years, and a long two hundred before them. Thrice, now, they have found one another again; and thrice, now, Hal has betrayed him. The thought raises venom in his gut, and he looks away.

“I didn’t much hope to find you here still,” Hal says.

Poins shrugs. “Lord Westcombe was kind enough to offer me a position, after – ” He stops himself, coughs a little, lest rage turns his words sour. “I’ll have to move on soon anyhow. I barely look three and thirty and should be nearing fifty.”

Hal nods. “Forty men claimed they saw me die at Naseby,” he says. “I encouraged their misapprehension. Thought I’d take the opportunity.”

“And next?”

“Two or threescore years of obscurity, ‘til this mess is over or all that knew me are long since gone.” He pauses, glances at his companion. “Saving you, of course,” he adds, quietly.

His tone alone makes Poins’ very blood seethe. “And then again?” he spits, licked with rage. “You arrive, you fall and rise in the hearts of men and die graciously and nobly for their cause?”

“Aye,” he replies, softly. “Or not, if that’s what’s meant, if that’s what...”

_Ends this_ , Poins thinks, and he feels bitterly, deeply weary. “There’s a barn at the edge of the estates, to the north. Sleep there tonight and be gone by morning. If the Roundheads turn up here I will send them straight to you.”

Hal nods once, closes his eyes. They both know Poins’ sparse kindness is far more than he deserves.

 

 

_31 st August 1422_

Hal is the first of them to die.

The process is both quick and slow; sudden and prolonged. He lies on a bed in a foreign land as his insides melt and his vision fades to greys. At the time it feels excruciating, but later he will think fondly of the rolling, cramping pain; it is nothing to what he feels when he wakes, a handful of days after his final, rattling breath, the screaming, raw agony that jolts through sinew and vein and pulls at his heart and lungs. The gloomy priest sat at his side shrieks and calls him devil; his family and friends are, it seems, gone, no doubt picking viciously at the country he left half-formed. He pushes aside the gibbering, terrified old man, and runs.

Poins’ death and resurrection go unmarked by all; a ragged, half-starved man slumps in the gutter one day and rises again the next. No one had taken the time to check for breath or pulse, and it is unlikely they would have bothered to enquire about his corpse until driven to do so by the sweet stench of rot.

 

 

_14 th June 1933_

“This is certainly a novelty.”

Hal sits before Poins’ desk, his wrists in cuffs, his hair smeared and matted from a night on a park bench; a regular occurrence of the past few years, and not one he particularly treasures. “I was rather surprised to find your name above the door myself.” Hal had hoped to find some trace of a smile on his face; but they had parted ways only a decade or so ago, and there is nothing there but a cool rage he’s most definitely seen before. “You make a very fetching detective.”

There would have been a time, many years before, when the idea of Poins on this side of the law would have been ludicrous in and of itself; but they are a product of the centuries that have passed since then, long and endless and with no less betrayal than their short, natural lives. The weight of the thought sobers him, and he wishes he could fidget more than the ungainly manacles allow him. “And you a rather poor businessman. You should have stuck with warfare – by now you must be quite the expert.”

Hal bites back his reply. In another place, at another time, he will explain to Poins why the change; why, after Verdun, he could never ride to war again. For now, he smiles, a somewhat thin and wretched thing, and says, “fancied a change of scene.”

Poins doesn’t seem particularly impressed, but doesn’t care to pursue it further. “They aren’t pressing charges,” he informs him, and dumps his file unceremoniously back in his desk drawer. “This conversation is a formality. I tell you not to do it again, you promise not to – ” He pauses, glances meaningfully Hal’s way, and Hal nods sincerely, utters his sixtieth counterfeit apology, the very image of contrition. Poins has seen the act many times before; there was a time when it made him smile. “ – and you go.”

Hal goes, his heart and his gut filled with lead. They had met too soon this time; there had been no forgiveness, no hope in Poins’ eyes.

 

 

_15 th October 1823_

Hal had known with an overwhelming, firm relief that Poins was there the moment he stepped through the door; he breaks from his entourage with some flimsy, half-thought excuse to jump from room to room, scour each and every person with equal fear and dread. He finds him lounging against a mantelpiece in an ante-room on the first floor, cigarette in hand, dressed with a thin, cynical smile, and is floored with relief, sags against the doorframe with a half-choked wheeze.

It’s been more than a century since he last had hope that Poins was still alive; more than a hundred and fifty since he’d last seen him with his own eyes. Poins turns from his companion to flick his ash into an empty glass – and spots him, an old, familiar ritual Hal once thought he would never see again. Hal seizes the day, crosses the room in confident strides, cuts into their conversation with a glib, flippant employment of witty repartee by way of introduction.

“It’s been a while,” Poins says as he shakes his hand and grants him a tiny smile. He makes his excuses to his companion and guides Hal by the arm to the empty corridor beyond, past a series of enigmatic doors to a room at the end of the hall; he locks the door behind them, and Hal has him up against it in a heartbeat, kisses him desperately. “Christ,” Poins mutters when he cedes, his smile wide and brilliant and achingly welcome. “I knew there was a reason I missed you.”

“I thought you’d gone,” Hal murmurs thoughtlessly; his mind is mostly employed with keeping his body from shaking. “Where were you?”

“West, at first,” Poins says, quietly. “Managed to hit New England at the height of the witch trials. Apparently recovering from a fatal pitchfork to the chest was a bit of a giveaway on that front. Went east for a bit after that, sort of dropped off the map. Execution never sits well with my chest.” He puts his lips to Hal’s temple when he feels him shiver. “I only got back to England the day before yesterday. I hadn’t even had time to ask about your name.” He sends Hal a shaky smile. “What about you? Spent most of your time with your boot up Napoleon’s arse, I should think.”

Hal’s smile is equally unsteady. “Something like that,” he mutters, and neither of them miss the way his voice cracks; Poins kisses him, hot and long and slow, and it’s enough, for the moment, to banish the black thoughts from the back of Hal’s eyes.

 

 

_31 st December 1499_

They find one another in a tavern, to perhaps no one’s surprise but theirs; the air is soft and smoky, cushioned by the weedy light of the candle stumps and the warm merriment of its patrons, murmuring and sousing their way to the year’s end. Hal regrets having entered the moment he ducks under the low-hanging, battered lintel.

This is not a commonplace event; he was gripped by mere whimsy, nostalgia, perhaps. None greet him as he enters, nor so much as glance his way – save Poins, leant against the bar, chatting warmly with a friend and absently distracted by the swinging of the door.

Hal feels struck through to the quick, as if he were at Shrewsbury, all those years before; and from the paleness of his skin and the wideness of his eyes his friend fares no better. He cares not for how he looks as he stumbles inelegantly across the room, hardly his customary stride. Even from the doorway he could tell Poins is trembling.

They stare at one another for a long, long while, as if desperate to assign this miracle to some trick of the light. “It has been some time, since I saw you last,” Poins says, cautious and level; though Hal presumes his intention was naught but neutral he can’t help but think of how they parted last.

“Fourscore years or more,” he agrees, inclines his head.

Their circumstances engineer a break in conversation; first, the fuss when an oblivious Hal knocks aside the drink the barkeep had placed stealthily by his elbow; and second, the breaking of the new year, announced by the long, tolling bell from the docks rattling every plate and pane of the crouching, smoky hovel.

“The turn of a century,” Poins says, with more than a little surprise.

“A sight I never thought to see again,” Hal replies, but with more fear than wonderment. Poins throws back his drink, avoids his eye, and Hal pauses with his own to watch him, quiet with hope and awe. “I thought myself alone in this,” he confesses quietly, his throat achingly dry.

Poins turns to him, grants him the smallest of smiles. “You are not.”

 

 

_12 th January 2012_

His predecessor’s corpse lies cooling on the bed beside him, and his doctor presses a phone into Hal’s hand. There are wheels to put in motion; a position to inherit, a company to run, friends to cast aside once again. Everything has, as ever, gone perfectly to plan.

Hal finds his way through the labyrinthine corridors to the dismal little balcony, as much for the view it affords as the signal it provides; the familiar, sprawling city stretches out before his feet, Parliament across the river, the Eye to his right. He looks down at the phone in his hand; a sleek, black thing, ugly and beautiful at once. He’s seen seven centuries, countless wars, the death of six fathers, the sixth rise and fall of friends. Against the grey, heavy London sky, he feels every one of his six hundred and twenty-six years.

“Enough,” he says, quietly, and with a stretch of his arm lobs the phone as close to the river as he can manage. “Enough.”


End file.
